Looking back on last year’s free agency and “The Decision,” do you look back and think it could have been done differently or do you just own up to it? Chris Bosh: “I say you own up to it. We all make mistakes. I think anybody would be kidding themselves if they thought they were perfect at anything.

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HoopsVibe’s Very Quick Call: So, Chris Bosh believes LeBron James made a mistake with The Decision.

In an interview, Bosh indirectly said James slipped up last summer by announcing on ESPN he was ‘taking his talent to South Beach’ and leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat.

James admitted as much last year, although he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what he’d have done differently.

Equally as damaging to the Heat was Bosh, James, and Dwyane Wade’s collective decision to announce their arrival the way teams celebrate a championship.

The Three Kings held a massive party, and acted more like rock stars than NBA superstars. A sold out stadium of Heat faithful cheered. To be fair, James was the one who predicted multiple championships.

Bosh`s arrogance at this pre-emeptive celebration - along with James and Wade’s surliness - turned off fans outside Florida and solidified the Heat’s status as villains.

From that moment the Heat was public enemy number one. And they have yet to get the bulls-eye off their back.

Curry weighed 350 when he auditioned for Miami in March. Curry intrigues Pat Riley, who might offer him a minimum deal postlockout if he loses another 12 pounds or so. His skills “are there, no question,” Grover said.

“Dwyane Wade’s agent said Friday his client has received no offers nor has had any discussions with professional teams from China, but he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of that scenario changing. ‘If offers are made down the road, will they be looked at? Absolutely,’ agent Henry Thomas told ESPN.com on Friday. The Chengdu Daily reported that Zhejiang Guangsha was offering Wade $2 million per month to play next season in the Chinese Basketball Association, a report that was later denied by a team official.

"When you think about the Olympics and the Dream Team, I have to throw it to you," Johnson said. "Kobe [Bryant] and them won by 22 points. Ehh, 22 points? We won by an average of 44 points. So when they want to step up to that, you tell them we'll be waiting on them."

"I haven't stopped working out really since May," Griffin said. "It's been every day, sneaking it in whenever I can." Griffin says it's frustrating for him to think that the NBA games may be interrupted after his first season playing in the league. Griffin missed all of the 2009-10 season with a broken kneecap after he had been the No. 1 draft pick out of Oklahoma. "Now my first three seasons, I could play 82 games," Griffin said. "So, we'll see what happens."

HoopsVibe’s Very Quick Call: Last year was overwhelmingly positive for the NBA.

The sporting world was galvanized by Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James joining forces and becoming the ‘Heatles’ in Miami.

Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd’s hard work was rewarded with an NBA championship, guaranteeing both immediate entry into the Hall of Fame when they retire.

Derrick Rose won the MVP award, leading the Chicago Bulls to the league’s best regular season record and a place in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder took another step winning two playoff series before falling to Nowitzki and Kidd’s Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals.

The Memphis Grizzlies made the playoffs and upset the San Antonio Spurs. After years of futility, the Indiana Pacers and Philadelphia 76ers were relevant and entertaining.

There are other storylines I’m missing.

For instance, high on this list is the emergence of Blake Griffin, whose aerial antics reminded the world there’s a professional basketball squad in Los Angeles not called the Lakers.

(And this squad, the Clippers, can compete and delight despite being owned by the twisted and incompetent Donald Sterling.)

Suppose there’s a lockout. One that wipes out the entire season. Griffin, who missed 2009 with injury, will have played just eighty-two games in his first three seasons.

Fans would have to wait a year to see Griffin assault the rim. Fans would have to wonder what Griffin would do to defend his crown at the 2012 Slam Dunk Contest. And fans, the purists, would have to wait a year to see Griffin’s above average passing and skill-set develop.

This is tragic. And just another thing Commissioner David Stern, the owners, Union Head Billy Hunter, and the players are risking with their posturing and rhetoric.

I hope they know what they’re doing. Griffin missing another year should be a last resort.
--Oly Sandor.

During his interview, the Minnesota Timberwolves forward (Kevin Love) was asked, “Did guys around the league enjoy the fact that the Heat didn’t win the championship?” You bet, Love responded. “Oh yeah, great amount of joy out of it,” he said. “Plus, for me, they say nice guys, good guys finish last. But Dallas, they just had a slew of great guys and veterans on their team that made for just a great team. “It wasn’t just two, three, four guys on the team, like Miami I kind of felt it was. “Around the league, it was kind of a consensus that guys were happy.”

HoopsVibe’s Very Quick Call: It really was the Miami Heat against the world in last year’s NBA Finals.

Literally.

Most fans were cheering for the Dallas Mavericks. Most media were secretly - or not so secretly- rooting for Team Cuban, too. And, no surprise here, so were most players.

In fact, Minnesota Timberwolves post Kevin Love claims the majority of players felt 'joy' when the Heat lost. The rebounding champion’s comments show that even the Heat's peers, the players, view them as villains.

An interesting conclusion can be drawn from Love’s comments: basketball purists appreciated the Mavs. They appreciated their balance and precise sets, which was in stark contrast to the Heat’s steady diet of ‘iso’ plays for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.

Love's right to suggest the Heat must develop into more of a team to win a championship as well as the support of fans and players.

This is the truth right now; the 2003 NBA Draft class is shaping up to be the most overrated draft class of all time. It’s been 8 years going until the 9th year for the group yet only one superstar won a ring (Dwyane Wade), the other rode the coat tails of the big three to get one (Kendrick Perkins), and the last one got a ring for doing nothing (Darko). These guys had a lot of hype leading up to the draft especially LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony. 4 years into their careers and people were claiming that they had the potential to be the best class ever surpassing the God-like 1984 class and 1996 class.

"They took everything off," Love told The Post. "I laughed, but it's not funny. You take everyone off? You go on our website and it's the dancers and Crutch our mascot. I think it's cool for the charity events, but not using any of the players, it's silly. Let's get this thing resolved and play basketball. It's disheartening to fans and to us. Let's get it figured out.''

Seems that a guy like Dwight Howard, nearly 7-feet tall and answering to "Superman," would be a perfect fit at Comic-Con, where he talked about both his budding career as a voice over actor and his basketball future. What about the Lakers? "That's everybody's question," he told the "Kick" audience. "I am wearing purple ... but that's Rock's outfit." The Heat? "Never."

HoopsVibe’s Very Quick Call: It would be like the Greasers combining forces with the Socs', or the Capulets breaking bread with the Montagues, or Paris Hilton ‘re-friending’ Kim Kardashian.

Or, like a want-to-be-superhero telling the Comic-Con masses he’d never join the villains, the bad guys, the capped-out Miami Heat.

Give Howard credit. He can charm a crowd -even if that crowd spends weekends playing D&D, Call of Duty, and comparing the old Star Wars trilogy to the new Star Wars trilogy.

However, this is bigger than Comic-Con. Howard’s current team, the Orlando Magic, hate the cross-state Heat. They hate Chris Bosh, LeBron James, and Dwyane Wade, known as the 'Three Kings'. And they hate arrogant Heat exec' Pat Riley.

There's little Howard can do. The NBA is locked-out. His Magic will lack the pieces, unless Gilbert Arenas and Hedo Turkoglu rediscover their past form, to topple the Eastern Conference champion Heat.

Howard will opt-out of his contract next July and likely join another superstar. Perhaps something happens with the Lakers -if Jerry Buss falls out of love with Andrew Bynum. Perhaps he links up with Deron Williams and the Nets.

“The Miami Heat, they’ve got a lot of great players, the `Big 2.’ They will be back,” O’Neal said from Louisiana during the broadcast, when discussing the NBA finals and how Dallas was able to beat Miami for the title. “LeBron James is taking a lot of criticism, but I know LeBron very well. He hears everything that everyone is saying, so I think he’s going to come back and have an MVP year this year.

Regardless of whether James Jonesre-signs (and there’s mutual interest), we hear forward Shane Battierwill be very much on the Heat’s radar after the lockout. The Houston Chronicle, after interviewing Battier, said “don’t be surprised” if he signs with the Heat or Bulls.

HoopsVibe’s Very Quick Call: How much improvement is necessary when you’re two games from winning everything?

If you’re the Miami Heat, a lot. It’s championship or broke in South Beach. Eastern Conference banners don't count. Not when your superstar predicts multiple championships at a pre-emptive victory party.

Simply put, the Heat was built to win it all –year after year.

Expect Executive Pat Riley to be active when the lockout ends and free agency opens. The oil-slick has eyes for Shane Battier.

Battier fits for two reasons. First, he’s a terrific role player, capable of spreading the floor with his range and defending premier wings. With Battier, opponents would get punished for helping on Chris Bosh, LeBron James, and Dwyane Wade. And James and Wade would have some choice as to who they matched-up with on defense.

Second, the Heat - right or wrong, fair or not- have a PR problem. Most living outside Florida couldn’t stand the ‘Heatles’. And most living outside Florida cheered when the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Title.

Enter Battier.

The Duke grad is well-spoken, intelligent, and humble. He communicates like a Fortune 500 CEO and/or politician. His measured, toned-down approach would lessen the day-to-day scrutiny the Heat faces.

So Battier would help on-and-off court. He may be the difference between the Heat winning and losing the championship in 2012 -if there's a season.

Despite a month that has taken him to fashion previews in Italy and France, then to another camp he hosted in his Chicago hometown, Wade said the night of June 12 and that lost feeling still stings.

"The sting is always going to be there when you lose," he said. "Obviously, it was my first time ever losing the Finals. The sting is there, no question about it. I joke with the kids. I said, 'All right, I'm going to make jokes about it. You guys are not going to ask me the question.' Because the first thing, when they ask questions, they want to know stuff. I make sure I shed some light on it in a sense-of-humor type of way, but the sting is there.``

We’ve known that the lockout was a possibility for the last couple of years,” he said. “It’s not just something that came overnight. (Williams) didn’t wake up and say, ‘All right, go play in Turkey.’ Obviously, this is something that he felt that if a lockout was to last a long time, ‘I would consider playing.’ It’s because of the game. He wants to play the game, wants to play it at a high level, and if we can’t play in the NBA, he’s going to take that opportunity to try to play somewhere else. Hopefully, we don’t get to that point, but if we do, I’m sure a lot of guys will possibly explore it.”

And Wade made it clear: He could be in that group. "If there’s an opportunity there, I’d consider it,” he said.

Right now, Dwyane Wade and other NBA stars can talk like they’ll sign overseas with a European club side.

Talk is cheap, however.

Will Wade and the crème de la crème of David Stern’s league uproot their family for a fraction of their NBA salary? And who will pay the insurance on their big-ticket NBA contracts?

Suppose Wade and his NBA brethren work out the particulars and sign abroad. There’s no guarantee they get paid because the best European clubs are in bankrupt nations like Italy, Spain, and Greece. And European owners are known for not honouring contracts.

Wade and others say they’ll consider Europe. They’ll also consider the risks and likely wait for the lockout to end in America.

This is hardly a surprise. Bryant is supremely confident. Always has been, too.

He was this way when plying his craft as a prep-to-pro star at Lower Merion in Philadelphia.

He was this way when Del Harris sat him as a rookie with the Los Angeles Lakers.

And he was this way when jostling with Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson for lead dog status with the champion Lakers.

Confidence, or arrogance, has made Bryant who he is. He won’t change, either.

Something that has changed: a part-time player on a championship squad calling out a once-in-a-generation superstar.

Scott Hastings never said a thing about Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler, or Magic Johnson when his Detroit Pistons won back-to-back titles. Same with Eric Riley when the Houston Rockets defeated the New York Knicks in the 1994 finals. And Sean Marks was silent when the San Antonio Spurs captured the Larry O’Brien trophy in 2006.

Even Josh Powell, a reserve with the glamorous L.A. Lakers, knew to stay silent when the purple-and-gold were champions in 2009 and 2010.

They knew their role. They knew their place. Mahinmi does not.

To be fair, Mahinmi had a slightly greater impact than the above players, serving as an energy reserve for Rick Carlisle and the Mavs’.

You’re coming off an NBA Finals where your team fell painfully short of its second world championship, and you have only three more years of guaranteed time with the LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade before their player options come up, giving all three the freedom to head elsewhere if this isn’t working out as planned.

Is this really the time for labor strife to potentially cost you a full season? Isn’t this the worst possible time to consider bonding with these newer, more desperate owners around the league for the sake of shared health? Wouldn’t a potential lost season put a huge dent into this perfect model you essentially have spent four years planning for and building?

Right now, the Miami Heat has the most to lose if there’s a prolonged work stoppage and a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with a hard cap.

It starts with owner Micky Arison. The billionaire has invested hundreds of millions of dollars on the Three Kings -Chris Bosh, LeBron James, and Dwyane Wade.

The controversial trio is only signed for a guaranteed four years. 2010-11 is in the books. 2011-12 is at risk because of the lockout.

Of course, the entire Heat model is also at risk. Suppose the owners win negotiations. Suppose they implement a hard cap. Suppose they rollback salaries.

Despite what he said publicly, Heat executive Pat Riley may be forced to break up his star trio. And Bosh would be the one to go.

Upgrading the supporting cast will also be a problem. With a top-heavy salary structure, the Heat will have little money to sign a point guard or center. Especially if soft cap loop-holes like the veteran`s minimum and mid-level exception are eliminated.

No. This is not an attempt to compare any of these guys to Michael Jordan. Nope. That has been beaten, raped, and pillaged to hell and back. This is more of an examination of the talent today that might have a chance to reach Jordan’s status. They are obviously not him and will not surpass him either. The goal is ridiculous anyway. However, getting close to Jordan is possible. It’s not out of the question.

There is a possibility that this might happen. Right now, things look grim. People are trying to remain hopeful. This is not a doom piece, but I usually go about expecting the worst out of everything. That’s life because when things go right, there is nothing to complain about. With that in mind, let’s pretend that the season is done. It’s over. Now what? The last lockout back in 1998 had the NBA miss 32 games. The league lost a lot of fans.